Venue announced for powertrain event

A Technology Innovation Centre product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 15, 2008

An audience consisting of senior auto-industry technologists and academics will be given the opportunity to hear from some of the best brains in the powertrain field.

The third Advanced Powertrain Control Symposium is to be held at the Technology Innovation Centre (TIC), Millennium Point, by Birmingham City University's Technology, Innovation and Development faculty, on 27th November this year.

The University's automotive team is inviting industry specialists to present papers concerning advances in powertrain technology, to benefit the development of motor vehicles of every size and type across the sector.

An audience consisting of senior auto-industry technologists and academics will be given the opportunity to hear from some of the best brains in the powertrain field.

With emissions and fuel costs challenging the industry, Symposium Convenor, Dr Manjit Srai and his TIC team, collaborate regularly with a range of automotive companies in developing methods of integrating powertrain technologies.

Together they have developed significant themes for the 2008 event.

These encompass engine control and simulation techniques in the context, not only of alternative fuels and the increasing popularity of hybridised power sources, but also of the significance they hold for associated powertrain technology.

Conference sessions will consider approaches to integrating engine and powertrain methods holistically and focus, in the context of diesel technology, on the after-treatment of emissions, in order to reduce carbon particulates output significantly.

Vehicle manufacturer event-partners are JCB, Ford, Jaguar-Land Rover, Caterpillar and NAC-MG.

Other key collaborators include TIC's US-based product design technology partner PTC, control specialists IAV, interface software developers ETAS and ATI, Japan-based test-equipment specialist AandD Instruments and multinational automotive industry consulting group, Ricardo.

A key, Midlands-based partner is Nuneaton's MIRA.

The conference is actively supported by IMechE and regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands (AWM).

It also features an exhibition of systems and equipment by a range of powertrain technology specialists, which include Mathworks, Add2, PI Surelock, Pulse EMS and Pixsoft.

Birmingham City University recently created a Centre of Excellence for Heavy Diesel Emissions Engineering (HDEE), based on a three-year, GBP 1.7m, research project.

The facility, which received GBP 638,000 worth of funding from AWM, enables the university to offer engine manufacturers an affordable, flexible, independent, European source of engine development and testing.

It combines with the university's AandD-equipped engine cell, which caters for hybrid-engine research, as well as the exploration of wide-ranging fuel types, from diesel and bio-fuels to petrol.

The university's Technology, Innovation and Development Faculty Associate Dean, Professor Peter Rayson says: "We have numerous research projects being developed at doctoral and masters' levels, using the Centre of Excellence".

"We expect our postgraduates to play a major part in developing environmentally sustainable diesel power for the UK industry".

The Centre of Excellence's 340kW, transient dynamometer was supplied by Malvern-based CP Engineering Systems and incorporates a particulate emissions measurement capability.

This is augmented by gaseous-emissions analysis equipment supplied by the Surrey-based instruments division of the Signal Group.

Both companies will be demonstrating their equipment.